Tax return preparation systems are valuable tools that provide services that were previously available only through interaction with a human professional, or that were painfully attempted by oneself. Prior to the advent of tax return preparation systems, a user would be required to consult with a tax preparation professional for services, and the user would be limited, and potentially inconvenienced, by the office hours during which the professional was available for consultation. Furthermore, the user might be required to travel to the professional's physical location. Beyond the inconveniences of scheduling and travel, the user would also be at the mercy of the professional's education, skill, personality, and varying moods. All of these factors resulted in a user who was vulnerable to: human error, variations in human ability, and variations in human temperament.
A tax return preparation system can provide benefits that human professionals are hard-pressed to provide, such as: not having limited working hours, not being geographically limited, and not being subject to human error or variations in human ability or temperament. A tax return preparation system can also be configured to provide individualized/personalized services to users. To provide such services, a tax return preparation system can be programmed to include and select from tens of thousands of user experience pages to assist users in preparing their tax returns. This incredible number of user experience pages can create a seemingly endless number of questions regarding the content of the user experience pages, regarding tax laws, and/or regarding the users' data within the tax return preparation system.
Users who have unanswered questions often feel fear, uncertainty, and/or doubt about what they are doing or about what they are supposed to do. The users' feelings fear, uncertainty, and/or doubt are further exacerbated when answers are difficult to find, when finding an answer is time consuming, and/or when a user does not know how to articulate the user's question. Feelings of fear, uncertainty, and/or doubt are typically inconsistent with satisfied/happy customers, and such feelings may cause customers to seek alternative measures to prepare their tax returns. Because tax return preparation systems are incredibly capable of saving users time and money, and are convenient tools for completing a potentially tedious task, helping users find answers to their questions is beneficial for both the users and the service provider of the tax return preparation system.
Thus, some of the long standing technical problems that exist in many computing fields and in the field of tax return preparation systems include a deficiency in systems with assisting users in finding answers to questions that the users have.